There is an art to blackmailing. I should know because I’m pretty sure my ancestors on the Scottish border were mixed up in it, either as perpetrators or victims, along with the Nixons, Maxwells, Armstrongs, and the other feisty Border clans.

You see, "blackmail" is an old Scottish Borders word, from back in the day when the Borders was a relatively lawless zone (for around 700 years) and what little law there was, carried a price tag.

Like any business transaction – kidnapping or hostage taking, for example – it depends on offering a relative service, i.e. giving the payer some benefit over not paying. Once the benefit is eliminated, it all becomes a bit pointless. Credibility is an issue. Morality not so much.

Durden uses this colorful, vaguely obscene-sounding
expression to refer to the tendency of an individual, following a protracted
period of mental anguish and spiritual suffering, suddenly to succumb to
“wishful thinking”: that is, all at once to see only what he wants to see, pushed into this state of
willed myopia by a desperate desire to manufacture inner peace for himself.

Last week, I Tweeted a series of comments denigrating “men” in the manosphere who go weak at the knees whenever a woman who agrees with them bursts onto the scene. For all the talk about men being dominant and leading women, an awful lot of guys in this corner of the Internet are eager to prostrate themselves before any girl who talks about how much she hates feminism and thinks being white is just swell.

The results of the Greek elections were not really a surprise to any Greek except those hopelessly in love with the previous government. Everyone knew that after five years of austerity, which has been harder on Greece than most wars, a lot of people gave up hope on any chance of a smooth transition to an era of stability, and felt the need to replace their government.

As I have stated in my Vdare article, SYRIZA was effectively pushed into its present position by the supposedly conservative New Democracy Party through the criminalisation of Golden Dawn which was the main opponent of SYRIZA in gathering the votes of those opposed to government policies. The disaffected – and there are many in Greece – were actually funneled by the establishment and the previous government to vote for SYRIZA, since that was the only option seriously opposed to the austerity measures.

The prism of æsthetics is not just an aspect of the struggle for national self-overbecoming, it is the struggle rarefied. To the ancients, there was no way to divorce their art from their cultural vantage.

You would not publish a scientific treatise on species of weeds and not consider the art of the actual object: the lavish woodcut illustrations, for instance, or Euclidian layout and typography, as well as esoteric symbolism splashed lavishly throughout. The binding would be hand-tooled, decorated and gilded, so that even to such a stark and (to a modernist viewpoint) seemingly artless subject, Form would remain as important as Function.

"The conspiracy theorists claim that these 'cultural Marxists' began to use insidious forms of psychological manipulation to upend the west. Then, when Nazism forced the (mostly Jewish) members of the Frankfurt School to move to America, they had, the story goes, a chance to undermine the culture and values that had sustained the world’s most powerful capitalist nation."

Enoch, perhaps taking inspiration from his recent reading of Kevin MacDonald's Culture of Critique, states that Cultural Marxism doesn't need to be an actual conscious conspiracy. Here is the summing up of his argument:

“In the end the argument is just a semantic shell game used by leftists to avoid any discussion or criticism of actual ideas and policies and keep the debate focused on word games and obfuscation. Cultural Marxism is a useful and coherent label for a body of easily recognizable leftist theories and ideas concerning identity politics and oppression. We could just as easily call it Flying Spaghetti Marxism for all it matters though. What is important is the substance, which people like Wilson never actually want to discuss.”

Preston's view, expressed in an article commenting on Enoch's article, stresses the abandonment of Economic Marxism implicit in the term Cultural Marxism and explicit in the various causes that Cultural Marxism promotes:

“Lastly, PC and capitalism are not necessarily in conflict. Capitalism wants workers, consumers, investors, and new markets. This means operating among an ever greater number of demographics. It is therefore perfectly logical that capitalism would embrace anti-racism, feminism, gay rights, etc. They want to sell products to minorities, women, and gays, and hire them as workers and managers, not discriminate against them. (See Noam Chomsky’s comments on how big business supports anti-racism). I suspect the serious thinkers among the cultural Left realize this, which is part of the reason why they have softened their anti-capitalism in their old age. This also explains why the corporate class has mostly rolled over in the face of PC. Remember that Singapore (which the Left considers to be fascist, and which free market conservatives often hold up as a model) also has strict “hate speech” laws.”

Johnson, in a comment on Enoch’s article, follows a similar tack:

“Cultural Marxism (another term for it is the New Left) is completely consistent with capitalism. Cultural Marxism does not champion the working class against capital. National Socialism taught the Jewish Left that the working class could turn against them. Stalinism taught the Jewish Left that the totalitarian state can turn against them. Thus the Jewish Left began to abandon the Old Left and replace it with the New Left, which champions "inclusion" and upward mobility within the capitalist system of previously excluded groups. Most of these groups are mere proxies and avatars for the group that pushes this agenda and benefits from it most, namely Jews. Cultural Marxism has expanded and cemented Jewish hegemony in the West. The result is, as Jonathan Bowden pointed out, something previously thought to be impossible: a hyper-oligarchical form of capitalism with a reigning Left-wing value system. (It is Left wing, at least, until the Left conflicts with Jewish interests.)”

From his other writings and podcasts, Enoch could be fairly described as a race realist, gender traditionalist, American nationalist, cultural Christian, and believer in the market, in other words, not too distant from an old school Republican. Cultural Marxism, with its race denying, gender confounding, universalist, atheist, and socialist tendencies, is therefore an extremely convenient label for all the ideas and tendencies he is diametrically opposed to. Cultural Marxism is a greater convenience for Enoch as a catch-all bugbear than it would be for almost anyone else.

Those who can do, do; those who can't, teach; those who can't teach, teach Cultural Marxism.

Preston and Johnson's views, however, emphasize the sinister synergies between Capitalism and the Left, with Johnson giving this his usual Jewish spin – and not without reason in the light of the news that the Ferguson protests had largely been kept going by the generosity of George Soros. Rather than agreeing with Enoch, the views of Preston and Johnson significantly differ.

Both Preston and Johnson have ideas and attitudes that would be more comfortably placed on the Left. Johnson is much more socially liberal and has a keen interest in various economic theories like social credit that are truly anti-capitalist. Preston, of course, is well-known as an anti-state anarchist. I suspect that Enoch, in his troll-channeling humorous style, would describe some of Preston and Johnson's positions as "dildo" or even "autistic right," two phrases often employed on Enoch's excellent if irreverent Daily Shoah radio show. But cheap jibes aside, there is a real problem with ideological explanations of ideology and believing in "Cultural Marxism" just because it is personally convenient.

Preston, in his article, points the way by digging up some ideological history, something he is well versed in. Here he is on the surprising beliefs of the twin fountainheads of Marxism:

“Marx and Engels were essentially Germanic or at least Nordic supremacists, viewed indigenous peoples as non-historical, and regarded Western imperialism as a historically progressive force (they had the same view of capitalism).”

Preston would also be able to tell you that Marx was a rather sincere anti-Semite despite his own Jewish origins (self-loathing has perhaps always been germane to Leftism). What Preston's historical perspective reveals is that Marxism has greatly mutated and changed in its comparatively short history. Furthermore it has also developed remarkably diverse and contradictory regional variants.

This suggests that Marxism's actual essence is weak, or that it is merely a protean entity, ever ready to bend with the times. But such shape-shifting is not just limited to Marxism. We have seen it with Christianity and various political parties, such as the US Democratic Party, once the citadel of Ku Klux Klan power.

Far from the "insidious forms of psychological manipulation" of supposedly omnipotent academics (an oxymoron, in case you're wondering), what changed America was geopolitical expediency. In the 1950s with the threat posed by a particularly cunning and fascistic version of Communism, America was forced to reformulate its quintessential and, of course, ineradicable racism in such a way that it would not be a geopolitical drag on it in its struggle with the Soviet Union for the hearts, minds, oil, and markets of the non-aligned world.

Jim Crow might even have been around today if the balance of power had not tilted so dangerously against the West with the fall of China to Mao's Communists in 1949. Later still the liberal, secular West found an alliance with militant Islam to be particularly useful, as it sought to stem the spread of Communism by stirring up the Afghans.

History is full of such ideological backtracking, going all the way back to the Romans and their adoption of Christianity as a system for imposing a totalitarian system on their weakening empire – a move alas that did not pay off. Ideology, as it exists in the world, is nothing more than a protean form of convenience for particular political alignments and group interests, which are sure to shift from time to time. All ideological formations are prone to this plasticizing effect, which, over time, turns each one into a mockery of itself. What exactly is the point of any ideology besides putting a gloss on underlying factors?

But the clincher when it comes to considering Cultural Marxism and the absurd notion that an ideology can be a causal factor, rather than just a weird form of PR, is the Frankfurt School. This group of German-Jewish academics and its corpus of writings is cited as the engine of the Cultural Marxist Revolution that has supposedly conquered the West with its legendary "march through the institutions." But the Frankfurt School was essentially just a small group of ugly, uprooted academics with funny accents who couldn't write to save themselves, or anybody else for that matter. Just try reading their works – I dare you!

After being unceremoniously kicked out of Europe, they were horrified at ending up in a country that had no need for their Marxist claptrap. That Cultural Marxism then supposedly became such a big success is only explicable by the fact that it didn’t.

Adorno: not fond of short, clear sentences.

How can anyone claim that Cultural Marxism is an effective ideological force when its key texts, the major works of the Frankfurt School have hardly been read by any of today’s Leftists – and even if they have, it's a fair bet that they haven't been understood at all well. For an ideology to have any validity it has to have a clear cut message that can be communicated, and which can then move people. The Frankfurt school lacks these attributes.

Peoples and societies may be changing in many puzzling and aberrant ways, but none of this would ever take place if it were not for the consent of certain powerful economic and cultural elites, and the forces and interests that they channel. Ideology is just the wrapping paper for that particular package, not its substance.

The value system of something as large, complex, and powerful as the West or any other empire will never come from musty books and cloistered academics, but instead from trade systems, consumption patterns, and geopolitical power balances. If sticking a label on aspects of this is temporarily expedient, then names like "Liberalism," "Marxism," "Cultural Marxism," or even "Islam" may be appended, but, underneath, quite different mechanisms do their work.

Islam is a good example of the protean aspects of ideology. It essentially got its start not as "the faith of the true believers," but as a rather sleazy device for uniting the desert tribes to take full advantage of the massive mutual weakening that the Byzantine and Sassanid Empires had been inflicting on each other for decades beforehand. The faith or ideology of Islam would have had no traction otherwise, and in the face of two healthy empires able to repel them, the tribes would have cheerfully returned to slitting each other's throats. It was plunder that built Islam, and when the plunder ran out, it went into a protracted period of abeyance. It's recent revival since 1967 as a supposed "ideological force" has much to do with the expediences of asymmetrical warfare for which its tribal origins give it some utility and its convenience as a channeling device for second-generation immigrant ressentiment in Europe.

So, how about Cultural Marxism? If it is not the real world manifestation of the world-changing brains of Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse, and their modern-day followers, what exactly is it? One thing is for sure: it is not a coherent set of ideas that is shaping the world in its image. The power flows the other way. Cultural Marxism is simply the gloss that a post-Christian West, caught in the habit of seeking moral justification, places on the decadent proclivities made possible by its unprecedented affluence. To kill it, you have to kill the post-Christian reflex, or else kill the affluence. Nothing else will do. Talking about it won't have the slightest effect.

Black people are not actually very good at this sort of thing.

There’s no point in trying to deny that many within the alternative right and white nationalist movements aren’t especially fond of black people. The implications of low average black IQ, the incessant grievance mongering of professional black leaders, as well as rowdy and violent black misbehavior are recurring themes when discussing the black question. Aside from the most extreme of white nationalists, you won’t see anyone calling for the extermination or ethnic cleansing of black people. Nevertheless, the general sentiment is that black people are at best an unwelcome presence and thorn in the side, and at worst a hostile population that poses a great danger to white people. Prominent white nationalist Jared Taylor has spent much of his career documenting the annoyances and even violence that blacks inflict on whites, which has culminated in his recent book Face to Face With Race. (See Matt Forney’s review).

The recent release of Clint Eastwood’s film American Sniper got me thinking about the long-range marksmen and cold-blooded killers who pick off their targets at distance. The film’s release, close to Martin Luther King Day, also got me thinking of those other unique individuals who go for that special kill; the high profile political assassination.

Colin Liddell reads his 2013 article on the meaninglessness of political terminology founded on the outmoded linear Left/ Right political spectrum. The article proposes that much of the confusion surrounding political definitions could be cleared up by invoking instead a political spectrum founded on vertical and horizontal vectors. The article can be read here.

Why would anyone ever say, especially in a pained voice, “Can’t we all just get along?”

All of us getting along means acceptance of whatever. It means that there is no evolution, no searching for a better answer. In practice, it means that we all retreat to our homes and ignore each other as well as ignoring what happens to our society. If it gets worse, that is not our fault.

People who ask why we cannot all get along are seeking this kind of bourgeois individualism. They want the freedom to ignore the consequences of their actions and their inaction, so that if they contribute to mass destruction of society, they can look back and say “But I was fair to everyone, and I guaranteed that we all had rights.” Yes, rights to ignore that our fate is bound together and that what determines this is not the freedom of individuals, but the health of societies.

I'd like to preface this article with the observation that I think Andy Nowicki is a thoughtful, articulate observer of the New Right, as well as the moral and spiritual wasteland that lies beyond it. That said, in his article "The Patriarchy" and Proper Manhood he seems to have committed the intellectual equivalent of one of those stagger-steps one can't help but do when walking past a lovely woman on the sidewalk.

I'm going to do the equivalent of filming this fumble with a high-speed camera, slow down the footage, and show exactly how and where he went wrong.

A lot of hype has surrounded Clint Eastwood’s cinematic version of American Sniper, the story of the most prolific sniper in American military history, Chris Kyle, accredited with 160 confirmed kills out of 255 probable kills, clocked up over four tours of duty in Iraq.

Much of the hype surrounding the movie has centered around Bradley Cooper’s performance, and Cooper certainly deserves the credit. While watching the movie, it’s difficult to remember that Cooper largely made his big time breakthrough with the buddy comedy The Hangover, and at least from a cinematic point of view, one can certainly say Cooper carries the film, which is, in some respects, a bit disjointed. Regardless, Eastwood and Cooper combine to give an accurate portrayal of the West’s modern day warriors, something that, not surprisingly, the professional Left throughout the world has found deeply troubling.

By now most of you will have seen Christopher Nolan's latest movie Interstellar, or decided not to bother, so spoiler alerts are no longer an issue. It is fairly well-written, ably-acted, and stylishly executed. There is plenty of interest and much provocation of thought, so I don't regret the money I spent to go and watch it.

Recently The Patriarchy, a Facebook page geared towards young nationalist men, ran a
series of posts, each of which featured an eye-catching picture of a highly
attractive young woman possessed of an apparently impeccable traditionalist
orientation and mindset. In each case, the text below the comely lass took the
form of a pep talk: “Come on lads, don’t give up! Play your cards right, get
your shit together, and something like this
could be yours!!!”

Responses to these posts, which I am paraphrasing here,
ranged from expressions of sullenly
cynical Return of Kings-esque bon mots
(“No way a girl like that really exists in the West – these days, they’re all a
bunch of fat, skanky liberal feminist sluts!!!”) to effusions of simple mouth-agape
admiration (“Whoa, she’s HOT!!!”) to displays of good-naturedly brazen, jovial
braggadocio (“Get away from her, you bunch of losers… she’s MINE!”), to general
declarations of approval with the overall message of the post (“What an
inspiring speech! I won’t give up!”),
each post more emphatic than the last (as signified here by the copious
exclamation marks).

And I suppose it was
all somewhat touching, in a way. The editor in question (I presume a slightly
older, though still rather young man, perhaps in his early 30s) wished to
instruct his youthful comrades not to despair, because dark as things may seem,
victory is actually within their grasp; “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers,” and all that. But I nevertheless found something about the scene quite unsettling; watching the feeding frenzy of commenters, each desperately tearing away a digestible message from the bewitching images on display, reminded me that even among those pockets of resistance to the cultural miasma that is the rancid mainstream, an air of conspicuously degraded sensualism still
pervades.

As Christianity fades and dies, and people reject the false dichotomy of Semitic atheistic Socialism and Semitic Christian Socialism, Asatru alone stands in a prime position to inspire our folk to a defense of our ethnic interests against their present defilement. Representing the entire ancient ancestral collection of wisdom, spiritual archetypes, and folklore, which our folk have been deprived of for so long, it is the only spiritual and political worldview that is capable of inspiring and redeeming our folk.

An important part of this tradition and one that it is easy for us to connect to are the names that our ancestors assigned to the months and days. We must not let any month or day pass without knowing the true meanings ascribed to them by our Germanic ancestors.

Today is the birthday of Yukio Mishima, the Japanese writer and nationalist revered by many on the alternative right. His fame was sealed by his ritual suicide on the 25th of November, 1970, after he had failed to incite a nationalist coup at the Ichigaya Bararcks in central Tokyo.

There is probably no other institution in the medieval world that has been slandered as much as the Holy Inquisition. Enlighteners, Protestants, and Jews managed for a long time to tarnish this very important institution in every possible way. Even in our own day, Hollywood continues to produce movies that reinforce this view.

But, as the saying goes, “lies have small feet.” Modern historical research has proved that a lot of the so-called “truths” that were widely believed about the actions of this institution were just myths created by modernity.

Thoughts on the shooting in France and multicultural stupidity

Throughout my years in elementary school I felt that certain teachers harboured unwarranted prejudice against me. I’d complain to my parents and my Dad’s response was fairly consistent: “What have you been up to?” My Mother’s response was somewhat more sympathetic: “Why don’t they like you? You’re so likable!” Both of their responses subtly implied that the way people treat you is a function of your own behaviour toward them. I have mentioned numerous times that the West needs to embrace this virtue of reciprocity. The virtue of tolerance that was championed by the Old Left of John Stuart Mill has been degraded by the modern left. In his essay On Liberty Mill championed a diversity of opinions (NOT a diversity of races) while placing one sole limit on free speech: using it to incite a mob.

The now-notorious Mohammed cartoons published in Denmark last year have in fact a historical, as well as geographical, precedent. In 1845, a satirical Danish journal named Corsair ran a series of cartoons mocking the appearance of Copenhagen author and personality — and later renowned philosopher and Christian polemicist — Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855). The cartoons highlighted the writer's baggy, ill-fitting clothes, particularly focusing attention upon his chronically uneven pant legs.

The latest article over at Radix is a piece written by the passionate, brilliant Roman Bernard, a man whom I admire deeply. In it, he gives his impressions of the reaction – or rather, overreaction – of the western public and identitarian movement(s) in the wake of the terrorist attack upon the offices and employees of a left-wing French satirical magazine.

I can't say that I disagree entirely with his article. It is a mistake common (but not exclusive) to the western people to react in a manner that is perhaps disproportionate to attacks made upon them in a certain manner.

In 1914, at the start of WWI the British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey, famously remarked "The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time."

Recently, in Germany there has also been some lamp dimming, and for a reason just as significant as 1914, if not more so. The cathedral authorities in the German city of Cologne decided to put out the lights of the famous cathedral in order to show their displeasure at the well-behaved anti-Islamic supporters of Pegida. Other prominent landmarks, including bridges over the Rhine and the Brandenburg Gate, also joined in.

Perhaps my biggest qualm with the blog, Stuff Black People Don’t Like is that its acronym is nearly impossible to say correctly on the first try. If FDR ever made an acronym that hard, which given how many he created, seems likely, “Paul Kersey,” the creator of the blog, should have been able to do better. Outside of this minor issue, however, his blog and its expansive archives are an incredible resource.

Within the unauthorized right, the media blackout (no pun intended) of interracial crime in the black-on-white direction is well understood. But that by no means implies that I want to spend a great deal of my time digging around the Internet in search of genuine reporting on the matter. Quite frankly, I want someone else to do it for me. From what I can tell, there are four competitors in this field: SBPDL, The Daily Kenn, American Renaissance, and Top Conservative News. All do an excellent job in curating news stories from an incredible array of sources, and all are equally well intentioned, but what makes SBPDL shine is the commentary it provides. Like the above sites, it produces reports on the general anti-white state of American culture, but a service it provides that is completely unique, is its commentary on each news item. While other sites merely curate, SBPDL, digs in and highlights the details.

In this post I am going to argue that one important reason why many people adopt a liberal political ideology is that it boosts their self esteem by allowing liberals to view themselves as noble warriors in a great battle against evil. There is a good deal of empirical data which is consistent with this theory. But I will also be making use of some evidence which is purely anecdotal. I fully recognize the limitations of such data. But I am still going to talk about it because it adds something meaningful to this theory.

The first question that needs answering is why liberals would need to increase their self-esteem in a way that conservatives do not. The answer is simple: liberals have less self esteem than conservatives to begin with.

One of the most noticeable trends during my life has been the extent to which popular documentaries have been dumbed-down and feminized. In the past the typical documentary on British television would be presented by someone like Lord Kenneth Clark, Sir David Attenborough, Jacob Bronowski, or James Burke, men of evident genius, with deep familiarity with their subjects. But combined with their great erudition, they often had a slightly aloof manner or an appearance that wasn't exactly show business.

With the closing of another year marked by media hysteria, the narrative that the crazed hermit North Korean regime orchestrated the hacking of the Japanese-owned Hollywood company Sony, thereby assaulting our precious freedom to crank out cultural subversion, has quickly begun to fall apart. From the beginning the story never held neither consistency nor any forensic evidence. Yet the notion that ruthless Korean dictator Kim Jong Un wants to keep them from the movies, the modern substitute for the West’s emptying churches, has sent cable news consumers into a panic.

There are many things that separate the United States from other Western countries, but one of the most defining is the presence of blacks.

Let’s just be honest: everyone hates blacks. Even middle-class and wealthy blacks hate blacks, if Chris Rock’s Niggas vs. Black People sketch is any indication. The SJW media wallpapers over the worst black behavior, but with the implosion of the Ferguson narrative and a million other miscalculations from the PC left, whites are rapidly getting fed up with what is basically a hostile, parasitic population in their midst.

Face to Face with Race, Jared Taylor’s compilation of whites’ experiences with diversity, is a misnomer: it should have been called Face to Face with Blacks. Latinos and Asians are glossed over in its 200-plus pages; its primary subject is black people. Its protagonists are ordinary whites, some of them liberals, who became cynical race realists after having to deal with black perfidy on a daily basis, whether it was in the classroom, at their jobs, or in prison.

Doctor Johnson once famously refuted the nonsensical idealism of the Anglo-Irish cleric Bishop Berkeley by kicking a rock. This example is relevant when considering the over-intellectualization that many on the alternative right are drawn to in their attempts to challenge the hegemonic power of "Liberal Ideology," while also signalling their general intelligence and all-round superiority to their friends. It is certainly relevant to the contentious and arcanely expressed ideas of Alexandr Dugin.

The Russian intellectual's striving for a "Fourth Political Theory" is based on his abstracted view of the history of ideology, which, like Berkeley's idealism, seems to exist in a rarefied space separate from a robust dialogue with physical reality of the kind that Johnson favoured.

You’ll have heard by now of “dindus” and the “gentle giant” who wishes to “turn his life around.” Although now almost always Black, the origin of this archetypal object of liberal leftist sympathies was the character of Jean Valjean in Victor Hugo’s famous novel, Les Misérables, which has also been made into one of the longest-running musicals of all time as well as a movie or two.

Valjean is described as a stout, hardy man of great muscular strength, whom we are made to feel has been unjustly imprisoned for merely stealing a loaf of bread and then only because he was starving. Our hearts are supposed to bleed for him and then burn with a sense of outrage at the terrible injustices of the world.